Will the US uphold its credo on Taiwan? 

The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on 14 September 2022, endorsed legislation that would markedly enhance US military support for Taiwan, including provisions for billions of dollars in further defence reinforcement.  

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee advanced the Taiwan Policy Act of 2022 by 17-5, despite concerns about the bill in the US, that it would instigate Chinese ire. 

The bill would be the most broad-based reorganisation of US policy toward Taiwan since the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, which forms the basis of US engagement with the island nation. China views Taiwan as part of its sovereign territory, and perceives any vindication of Taiwan as an interference in its internal affairs. The US is Taiwan’s main supporter and arms supplier, a subject of heightening variance between Washington and Beijing. 

The bill was first introduced on 16 June 2022. The bill would allocate USD 4.5 billion in security assistance for Taiwan over four years, and backs Taiwan’s engagement in international organizations. It also espouses changes in US policy toward Taiwan, such as treating it as a major non-NATO ally. 

Close on the heels of the Senate approval, on 15 September 2022, China said that it had lodged “solemn representations” with the United States.  If the bill continues to go forward, it would affect US-China relations, Mao Ning, a foreign ministry spokesperson, said at a regular media briefing. 

Mao fulminated against the new US legislation as sending “a serious false signal to the separatist forces of Taiwan independence.” 

“China is firmly opposed to this and has made solemn representations to the US side that there is only one China in the world, that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China’s territory, and that China will unswervingly promote the complete reunification of the country,” the spokesperson said. 

The bill came over one month after China conducted its largest-ever military exercises around Taiwan in response to an earlier (2-3 August) visit to the self-ruled island by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi. China strongly decries any legitimacy given to Taiwan by the US. 

In the aftermath of the US Senate panel’s advocacy of the Taiwan Policy Act of 2022, China strongly inveighed that anyone who tries to obstruct Taiwan’s ‘reunification’ will be ‘crushed’. 

At the 77^th UN General Assembly session held between 13 September 2022 and 27 September 2022 at the UN headquarters in New York, US, Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, told the meeting of representatives of nations that: “Only when China is fully reunified can there be true peace across the Taiwan Strait.” 

He added that Beijing would ‘take the most forceful steps to oppose external interference’ on the self-governing island. China habitually bulldozes, internationally, moves by any country or corporation that make the slightest reference to Taiwan being an independent nation.  

Wang also claimed that anyone who tries to stop China will be ‘crushed by the wheels of history’. 

“The PRC government is the sole government representing all of China,” Wang said. “The One-China principle has become a basic norm in international relations.”   

The Chinese reaction also came after US President Joe Biden said, early September 2022, that the US would defend Taiwan militarily if China attacked. 

Also, on 24 September 2022, China’s foreign ministry, in a statement following the meeting between US secretary of state Antony Blinken and the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, on the margins of the UN general assembly in New York, said the US was sending “very wrong, dangerous signals” on Taiwan, and the more rampant Taiwan’s independence activity, the less likely there would be a peaceful settlement. 

“The Taiwan issue is an internal Chinese matter, and the United States has no right to interfere in what method will be used to resolve it,” the ministry cited Wang as saying. 

This came after the US secretary of state told his Chinese counterpart, on 23 September 2022, that the maintenance of peace and stability over Taiwan was vitally important. “For our part, the secretary made crystal clear that – in accordance with our long-standing One-China policy, which again has not changed – the maintenance of peace and stability across the Strait is absolutely, vitally important,” a senior US administration official said. 

China has been increasingly and vehemently vociferous about validating the One-China policy that proclaims Taiwan as part of China.  

Taiwan, on its part, depends heavily on the US for its immediate and future survival. The US position over the Taiwan issue, meanwhile, remains characteristically flip-flopped. While Biden has, on four different occasions, pledged his commitment to defend Taiwan, the US perhaps ostensibly though officially keeps reiterating its acquiescence to a ‘One China,’ policy. After Biden’s inflammatory remark early September and on previous occasions, the White House quickly came out with a clarification that it views the `One China’ policy as standing. The United States does not take a position on Taiwan’s sovereignty under Washington’s “One China” policy, the State Department said Monday, 26 September 2022. 

The US keeps reiterating that it abides by the One-China policy (as it did recently at the UN General Assembly session) and does not subscribe to independence for Taiwan, but the US is required to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself under the US Taiwan Relations Act (TRA).  

The 1979 TRA states that the US will maintain the capacity to defend Taiwan but is not forthcoming on whether or not the US would actually militarily intervene if China attacked – ultimately this remains a US presidential decision. 

In the same year (in 1979), the US recognised China and de-recognised Taiwan. It stated that the government of the People’s Republic of China was “the sole legal Government of China.” 

Nonetheless, the US has continued to arm Taiwan. Over the past decade, the US has announced more than USD 20 billion in weapons sales to Taiwan. A recent (August 2022) approval of a USD 1.1 billion military equipment deal between the US and Taiwan has further been the subject of Chinese excoriation and verbal coercion for the US to renege. 

China sees Taiwan as a recalcitrant breakaway province, while Taiwan perceives itself as a sovereign state, with its own constitution, military and elected leaders, far removed from autocratic China. 

Taiwan first came under Chinese occupation in the 17th Century when the Qing dynasty began administering it. Then, in 1895, it was surrendered to Japan after China was defeated in the first Sino-Japanese war. 

China retook the island again in 1945 after Japan was humbled in World War Two. 

But a civil war flared up in mainland China between nationalist government forces led by Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong’s Communist Party. 

The communists seized power in 1949 and formed the government in Beijing. 

Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang Party fled to Taiwan, where they governed ever since. 

China recounts history to affirm that Taiwan was originally Chinese territory. But the Taiwanese contest that, saying they were never part of the modern Chinese state that was first founded after the revolution in 1911 – or the People’s Republic of China, that was instituted under Mao in 1949. 
Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is now seeking a third five-year term in office, has made it his career’s mission to reunify the dissentient island with the mainland, and has been explicit in stating that this may be done by force if necessary.  

General Mark Milley, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, in June 2022, warned that while a Chinese attack on Taiwan is not “imminent”, the US is nonetheless watching “very, very closely” for signs they are preparing to launch one.  

Speaking to the BBC, Milley said that China was “developing a capability” to attack Taiwan, but whether China would actually do it remained “a political choice”.  

President Xi Jinping has “mentioned that in public forums, he’s mentioned it in speeches, that he has challenged the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to develop the capability to attack Taiwan at some point in time,” Milley said. 

In late September 2022, Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokesperson Ma Xiaoguang told reporters that China would prioritise “peaceful unification,” but he maintained the government’s line of refusing to rule out the use of force to achieve its objective regarding Taiwan. 

“We will work with the greatest sincerity and exert our utmost efforts to achieve peaceful reunification,” Ma said. “But if Taiwan independence separatist elements or external forces provoke us or ever cross our red lines, we will be compelled to take drastic measures.” 

The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), which is the TAO’s counterpart in Taipei, rejected Beijing’s latest feelers. It told off Ma’s press conference as a “domestic political campaign to extend the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader (Xi Jinping)’s rule.” 

Taiwan’s insecurities are compounded by growing Chinese military superiority and fears that China may be in a position to take the island nation in a matter of years. China has been efficacious in isolating Taiwan internationally through its economic, diplomatic and military might. Most nations of the world today have de-recognised Taiwan in favour of China as they get decisively ensconced in China’s Belt and Roads Initiative umbrella. 

Meanwhile, in Taiwan, anti-China sentiment is growing manifold. According to the Election Study Center at Taipei’s National Chengchi University, since 1997, the year China took over Hong Kong from the UK, the percentage of the Taiwanese population that endorses formal independence has doubled to more than 30 percent, while support for unification has fallen by more than half to single digits.  The number of Taiwanese who call themselves Taiwanese has risen to 63 percent in 2021 from 47 percent in 1992, while those that claim they are Chinese has declined to almost 5 percent from 26 percent in 1992, according to the survey. 

Taiwan’s perception of China’s crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong has made reunification an even more daunting prospect. Taiwan’s trepidations are mounting with China’s growing ascendance as a military superpower that rivals the US.  

For Taiwan, its sheer survival depends on the strength, steadfastness and unequivocalness of US policy (that is a tad ambiguous) to deter a Chinese invasion. For the US, supporting Taiwan as an important partner is an all-too compelling factor in dealing with the challenge of the Chinese effort to undermine its power and influence in Asia. Also, it is a matter of credo that a vibrant democracy is preserved and protected against a seemingly cruel autocracy.